Because the 17th is St. Patrick's day...

Art and text by Thalia Took:
used with her gracious permisson

"Feed your fires!"

Bride (or Brigid) is a beloved goddess of the Celts known by many names, Bride being the Scots Gaelic variant. Her names mean "the Exalted One". She tends the triple fires of smithcraft (physical fire), healing (the fire of life within), and poetry (the fire of the spirit). In balance to this She also presides over many healing springs. Cattle are sacred to Her, green is Her color, and, perhaps one of the reasons She is so beloved (especially in Ireland)--She is said to have invented beer! Her feast day of February 1st is called Imbolc (the Christian Candlemas), when the predictions for the coming spring's weather were made, a remnant of which is seen in the modern Groundhog Day. She is daughter to the Dagda, and invented the first keening when her son Rúadán was killed.

from Talk to Action

One can almost hear Mark Twain snorting in disgust.

(Image by Kafka/AP)
This week Governor Mike Rounds of South Dakota finally ended the suspense. After a prolonged, tantalizing and agonizing period of presumably sober deliberation, Rounds signed the Women's Health and Human Life Protection Act. The law protects human life beginning at "that point in time when a male human sperm penetrates the zona pellucida of a female human ovum." Unless, of course, the live human in question is a woman who wants an abortion '

I've been thinking about the Women's History issue for 25 years. There's precious little of it out there, precisely because men have been the historians. There have been excellent books on Herstory since the 70's, but I'm very disappointed to find that most young women have either never heard of them, or they buy into the smears directed at them by patriarchal sources. Cynthia Eller gets all the press because she sold her sisters out for a seat at the table with the big boys.

Her attitude is bullshit. Knowledge of the importance of women in the ancient world could have a very real effect on women's futures. It gives us a new way to view everything -- religions, politics, society, families, education, labor issues - all of it. We need to know where we've been. We need to know that the sad state of affairs in which we find ourselves today is neither natural nor inevitable. There have been and still are peaceful, matrifocal societies which have managed to survive patriarchy and colonialism. Representatives from these cultures attended a Matriarchy Conference in Austin last fall. Herstory is real, and we are discovering more every day. We have to dig through the ashes of witch burnings and Christian raids on ancient cultures to find it, but it's there for us and it's high time we give it a thorough look as women, for ourselves.